


Sweet Dreams

by your_angle_of_music



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Angst, Canon Era, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-14 05:08:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28915116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/your_angle_of_music/pseuds/your_angle_of_music
Summary: A letter from Enjolras to Grantaire. Left under the latter’s stack of empty bottles on the evening of June 5, 1832. Never opened.
Relationships: Enjolras/Grantaire (Les Misérables)
Comments: 13
Kudos: 38





	Sweet Dreams

Grantaire—

Combeferre has half-ordered me to rest for ten minutes, and I truly did try to comply. But the words that we exchanged earlier will not leave my mind, and now I find myself writing to you on a sheet of paper that should have been used to take inventory.

But none of that concerns you. I mean to tell you that I am ashamed that I lost my temper, and I must ask your forgiveness. On a night like this one, which could well be my last, I cannot bear to leave any wrongs unrighted or any words unsaid.

“Let me sleep here,” you said, and so I did, and I would have left it there. But, Grantaire, you said something else, too, something that I should dismiss as the drunken ramblings of a drunken man, and I did. I do. Except, as I turned back towards my duty (which I now abandon as I write) I saw in your eyes a sadness and a softness the likes of which I have never seen.

“Let me sleep here,” you said, “until I die here.”

I know you. You are the man who turns inspiration into chaos and revolutions into games of dominoes. You are the man who defies my trust, every time, and so you are the one man who can make me truly angry. You are the man who talks circles around all of us and around himself, too. Sometimes I think you drown yourself in words even more than you drown yourself in wine and absinthe.

In short, you are the man who is incapable of believing, of thinking, of willing, of living, and of dying. 

I do not think I understand you, Grantaire. How you can live in a world as filled with injustice as this one and not care. I know your friends matter to you. I notice your smile glowing in the firelight, sometimes, as you gaze at Joly and Bossuet in those rare moments of silence you permit. Sometimes I think I see you look to me that way, and I do believe it is as beautiful as the dawn. Perhaps you think that you can protect us from our inevitable foolishness, or protect yourself from your inevitable grief.

But my friends matter to me, too. And I am here tonight because I cannot bear to fail them. My love has built my portion of the barricade. The nation that I fight for is made of _people_ , Grantaire, people like the ones whom I care for. I shall fight for every gamin with Feuilly’s hands. I shall fight for every peasant with Bahorel’s eyes.

And do you think that I do not fight for you too? Do you think that I would not die for the freedom contained in your smile? For the savage grief and firelight joy coiled in the center of your tangled, mangled words?

I could love you, you see. Like Achilles loved Patroclus. Like Orestes loved Pylades. Quietly. Steadfastly. And enough to burn the world down and build it back anew. 

I could love you, but not while you think that a better world is so impossible. Not if you refuse to be saved.

I shall put aside my pen now, and take up my sword. There’s a barricade that needs building. I believe I hear Courfeyrac calling my name. 

So sleep long, Grantaire. Sleep well. I pray that you will awaken to a free city. I pray that I will be there to see it.

—Enjolras

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for stopping by!


End file.
